Maps are a key feature for many campaigns, as they not only tell you where you are, but also what is around you and where you might want to go next. The places they show come with names, and to know more about them, you need a gazetteer. Below I am reviewing Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass, a supplement for RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha that is basically a big, detailed gazetteer of this iconic central crossroads of the northern continent, together with a big, beautiful map. These two elements is what you naturally expect from the book. But it is actually more than that! Let's start with the map, and then the book itself.
First a bit of history
Previous Dragon Pass gazetteers were in the Genertela box set for RQ3, although with less detail, and after that in Dragon Pass: A Gazetteer of Kerofinela for HeroWars. Much later, we got the ponderous Guide to Glorantha, the biggest gazetteer I have ever seen for any RPG. More recently, the RuneQuest rulebook includes a general gazetteer of several homelands in Dragon Pass, and after that the GM Screen Pack includes a gazetteer of a small part of Dragon Pass: the Colymar tribe lands.
The map
The map of Dragon Pass included in the book is huge, detailed, and clear. Every named location in it has a description in the book. It is lovely. Apart from being informative, if you look close enough, you will notice its author Matt Ryan included several cool details. For example, some landmarks have funny shapes like Big Orven Hill, depicted as they look, instead of a generic dot or hill shape. Other details, like the shadow of the hydra heads looming from the Hydra Hills, make the map richer and funnier to look at. Another interesting detail are the lands used for crops, usually next to rivers, which tells you how much of Dragon Pass is just wild, uncivilized land. There could be anything out there.
Although there are many small towns in the map that are left unnamed, that is by no means a bad thing, as it lets you name them and describe them as you wish. Of course, you can also name and describe an already described location as you wish ("Your Glorantha Will Vary"). I'm mentioning that just for those people who might want to follow canon closely, but still like some freedom to create their own little corner of Dragon Pass nonetheless.
Both sides of the foldable map of Dragon Pass by Matt Ryan (click on them to enlarge) - Pictures courtesy of Temple Phoenix
On the other side of the map there is another map that focuses on the main roads in Dragon Pass and the Holy Country. This highlights the location of the most populated towns, and how they are connected. Therefore, it is useful for calculating traveling times and planning routes. It will be particularly useful for determining how armies move around the region during the war that has already begun!
On the negative side, the foldable map could have been larger. The physical version measures 41 x 54 cm, but the margins around it make it really 38 x 36 cm and the texts are tiny. If you want a bigger version, there are several alternatives. With the PDF, you can print the super hi-res map file (9921 x 9934 pixels). You can also purchase a bigger version (up to 89 x 84 cm) of the same map, or even larger as a shower curtain or duvet cover at Redbubble. Or you can purchase a 61 x 60 cm version in velvet fabric (approx. A1 size) at All Rolled Up. Finally, it would also have been useful for the map to include coordinates, so that when you read a cool description in the book, you could then find it on the map more easily.
The book
Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass is more than map and a gazetteer. It contains other useful bits of information that make the book more complete, like the history of the region, most important people, stats of typical denizens, expanded rules for creating adventurers, a couple tiny new cults, and more creatures.
The background section summarizes the mythic events and the timeline of the place after the Dawn through the First, Second, and Third Ages. It answers questions such as: Why is this region so central in the history of the continent? Why is the highest mountain in the world in Dragon Pass? Or even: Why are there so many titanic sleeping dragons here?
The Glorantha Sourcebook (read a review) also includes a long section about the history of Dragon Pass, and it is more detailed overall, except when it isn't. Some paragraphs are the same, but for example, the section about the mythical history of the region is longer in Lands of RuneQuest. This latter publication also includes way more information about the First and Second Council, and the First and Second Age in general. However, some details are only found in the Glorantha Sourcebook, like the fact the Invincible Golden Horde used Chaotic parasites to scour some dragonewt cities, or the dynasties of queens and kings. Still, the text in Lands of RuneQuest flows better and is more coherent. Moreover, it is accompanied by some maps of the political development of the area, similar to the ones for the history of the Lunar Empire in the Glorantha Sourcebook, but for Dragon Pass. These maps help you follow the history of the place in a visual way, so they are a great addition.
Some details that stuck with me: Reading about the events of the First Age, I can't help thinking how many of these will feature in the next installment of the Six Ages video-game saga, whose working title is "A World Reborn". The High Council of Friends reminds me a bit of the UN of our world, born out of a great human catastrophe with honorable goals and dreams. Funny how the First Council started with storm-worshipping Heortlings in it, and the Second Council was mainly sun-worshipping Dara Happans. Finally, the text about the Second Age mentions that "less than hundred people" survived the Dragonkill War. What became of them? Were they all Delecti the Necromancer and his household perhaps?
After the background, the book goes over several topics about Dragon Pass, such as its geography, rivers, weather and precipitation, population numbers, fauna, elder races, and kinds of settlements. While some of this data is already in the "Homelands" section of the core rulebook, here it is expanded with many more details. For example, the section about rivers in the rulebook is three paragraphs long, but here it is more than double that extension, and while the rulebook includes a table about the precipitation and temperature in the Sartarite hill fort of Clearwine, here you get similar tables for two other Sartarite towns. However, the weather tables for Furthest and Queen's Post are exactly the same as in the rulebook.
In other topics, the expansion is more useful. For example: while the rulebook describes what distance you can cover on foot/horse/cart, Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass includes a nice map and table of pre-calculated caravan travel times. This way you can know exactly how long it will take for your caravan to get from Boldhome to Furthest, and other important towns. This is extremely useful for any campaign in Dragon Pass.
The gazetteer is divided into 6 sections each covering one of the main territories that make up Dragon Pass: Tarsh, the Grazelands, Wintertop & Old Tarsh, the Far Point, Sartar, and "The Wilds". This latter section covers all the areas not ruled by humans that exist beyond the borders of the other 5. At the beginning of each section the book offers information about its inhabitants. Some of this is repeated from the rulebook, such as "Stereotypes", "Common attitudes", and "Religion", but others are expanded or new, like the "Population" numbers and the "People everybody knows". For example, in the section about Sartar you get a big table with the population numbers of all tribes, divided into rural and urban, plus its tribal center, and number of clans. Curiously, some of these numbers have been updated, but regardless, it makes it easier to compare the sizes of the Sartarite tribes. Did you know that the Pol Joni have 3 clans and the Sun Domers 10? This data is great to create your own adventures, and the same goes for the descriptions of important personalities. For example, the section about Sartar includes 19 descriptions of VIPs such as Kallyr Starbrow, several tribal leaders, like Vamastal Greyskin or Serternas the Bright, and others like Estal Donge and Temertain (who is already dead in 1625). These are great to flesh out your campaigns and act as patrons or archenemies. However, Sartar has the most personalities described, with other regions such as Tarsh having only 7. This should have been more balanced, otherwise it feels like the book is biased towards campaigns in Sartar.
On top of that, each section also contains some summaries of the most typical events adventurers from that homeland may have experienced. This is great if you want to create adventurers by skipping the family history mechanics, but still want to give players a run-down of key events, so they can tailor their adventurer's passions to them. Moreover, some regions include new occupations (4 in total): athlete, gladiator, mountaineer, and laborer. They are rather fringe, but they can be useful for specific campaigns. The section about the Wilds feels a bit like an expansion of the Glorantha Bestiary, as it includes rules for creating newtling and wind children adventurers.
Then, we get to the gazetteer descriptions which are the heart of the matter, and are arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference. In this ancient, magical land of dragons and mountains, you can find both boring and amazing landmarks. For example, you can find old ruins such as the city of Olorost, that was part of the Empire of the Wyrms Friends, and where dinosaurs usually gather, but nothing else is said about them. Maybe you can design a cool adventure there, and perhaps a future official or unofficial scenario will be set there. On the other hand you also get grand landmarks like a 12,000 meter-high mountain, or Skyfall Lake formed by a god's wound, quirky small things like an island that is two-dimensional, cities with gladiatorial arenas, valleys where huge dragons sleep, skeletons of huge dragons the gods killed, dwarf strongholds guarded by giant statues, and many others. Usually the most striking landmarks lay on the outskirts of civilized lands, but they are all looking for a place in one of your adventures, be it a quiet little town, or a truly dramatic landscape for an epic battle.
Since this is a RuneQuest supplement, every town description includes the temples of the deities present and their size, as it is crucial for knowing where you can replenish your Rune points. Not only that, but temples can also offer help and resources to initiates, so it is useful to have this information at hand when the adventurers in your campaign are traveling from one end of Dragon Pass to the other.
All this is what you would expect to find in a gazetteer, but perhaps even better than that is what you did not expect to find in the book. There is a wealth of other content accompanying the descriptions. For example, interspersed throughout the text, you can find stats of typical denizens of these places, so you can use them at any point in your adventures. It is useful to have all these ready-to-use stats you can use in a pinch, or use repeatedly as templates to create others by modifying some details to create particular NPCs. I have counted 23 of these: Typical Sartarite Tribal Chief Orlanth Rex rune priest, Typical Local Chief's Bodyguard Orlanth Adventurous initiate, Argan Argar troll rune priest, Typical Duck Point Warrior, Typical Geo's Innkeeper, Typical Sun Dome Templar, Typical Wasp Rider, Typical Lunar Garrison File Leader, Typical Beaked Dragonewt Scout, Typical farmer turned rebel, Typical Lunar Light Infantry Soldier, Typical Tarshite Tribal Militia, Typical Tarshite Green Bow cultist, Typical Tarshite Bandit, Typical Shaker Priestess, Typical Cannibal Virgin, Typical Vendref Guard, Typical Grazeland Pony Breeder, Typical Black Horse Rider and Mount, Typical Goblin, Typical Puppeteer Troupe Player, Typical Iron Dwarf Guard, and Typical Trollkin Air Cavalry! The stats of the Black Horse Troop are specially illuminating as they show a glimpse of the cult of Hrestol, an ancient hero of the West of the continent, the terrifying cannibal virgins are awesome, and the puppeteer troupe player is an NPC that I could see enjoying as a PC.
On top of that, the book also includes a couple new minor cults (Green Bow that offers its initiates an elf bow, and Damal the Deer Spirit), as well as two big spirits: the Black Crow Spirit, and Pig Woman. Finally, it also includes a small bestiary, with local fauna (bighorn sheep, black vultures, wood lizards), local monsters (the Melibkron, giant flies, giant honeybees, giant locusts, giant mosquitoes), new intelligent species (bird women, myrmidons, tiger men, and goblins, which are not what you expect!), and even two unique huge creatures: the Hydra, and the giant Trimmer.
Another extra are all the city maps the book includes. Although most are pretty basic, it is useful to have the layout of an important town available. There are also text boxes with varied details related to the locations next to them. For example, about moon rocks, and a great myth about the origin of Skyfall Lake. More like that, please. One that surprised me is the one about dragonbone. Did you know it is stronger than iron, and dragonewts use it to make their weapons?
On the negative side, some of the descriptions in the gazetteer are rather dry, with no details that might inspire your creativity. In this regard, the old, long out-of-print Dragon Pass gazetteer from the early 00's (published for the HeroWars RPG) had some beefier descriptions telling you more about the mythical history of some places.
As for the stats, it would have been more convenient to have all these typical characters in one place instead of spread throughout a gazetteer, although at least the contents page lists them so they are easier to find. I'm going to cut and paste them all in a single document. Finally, since the Glorantha Bestiary is already somewhat focused on central Genertela where Dragon Pass lies, it would have made more sense to include the new creatures there, and the same goes for the character creation data for newtlings and wind children. Besides, some creatures like bird women, the wasp riders, and myrmidons lack a bit more detail. For example, bird women are all female, but how do they reproduce? Without rounding up the information about their culture, I can't see how they fit in Dragon Pass, and therefore they are not as believable as other, long-established Gloranthan species, so unfortunately they look as a last-minute addition. Finally, although some text boxes are great, such as the one about dragonbone, it should have been part of the Bestiary next to the dragonewts entry, or in the Weapons & Equipment supplement. Having it is useful, but when you need to remember where it was you read something about the properties of dragonbone, the gazetteer is probably not the first book that comes to mind.
The look
The art in all RuneQuest books is just awesome, but they outdid themselves in this one. The cover by Ossi Hiekkala is an action scene in a gorge with a small waterfall, where several adventurers are cautiously approaching a dream dragon resting on a low peak on the background. On the foreground, a female character (perhaps Yanioth from the pregens) is summoning an Earth elemental. The composition, vibrant colors, and sense of impending danger make this cover stand out. That is no small achievement, because for a gazetteer the artist could have settled for something more boring like a landscape scene. Far from it, this cover exudes adventure, it has something akin to a pass between the mountains, and includes a dragon, so it skillfully encapsulates what Dragon Pass is about. It could only have been better if you could somehow identify the location.
Inside the book you can find beautiful two-page spreads showing landscapes preceding each of the 6 main sections, done by different artists. These are great to help immerse the reader in Dragon Pass and see it from the ground. The map is great, but something is lost when you look at places from a thousand feet altitude, so these pieces compensate for that. Moreover, the book includes vistas of Dragon Pass as you would see them from two vantage points each on one side of the Dragonspine mountains that divide it in half. These pieces by Mark Smylie are also great to get a feel of the land beyond the map, and they are detailed enough that you can play the game of identifying in them some of the biggest landmarks marked on the map. This book includes an awful lot of excellent art. My 3 favorite pieces are the full-page on the Shaker's Temple, the half-page piece of Muse Roost, and the Hydra. I also love the piece on the Temple of the Reaching Moon, as it is a gorgeous new take of the already iconic take that grazed the cover of the old Gods of Glorantha supplement for RQ3.
On the negative side, I profoundly dislike the one-page piece of a warrior duck, as I imagine these duck men to be 50% duck 50% human (as on the cover of the Bestiary or in a piece in The Red Book of Magic), but this one leans too much on the realistic duck look, which is a shame, because I otherwise love the style of Ossi Hiekkala. Also, the picture of Old Wind Temple should not depict a temple, as its walls are made of wind. Finally, it would have been great to get a picture of some Telmori. But this is just me nitpicking: the book is an absolute pleasure to look at. No doubt here: Chaosium wants us to stand in awe at the magnificent patchwork of cultures and landscapes that is Dragon Pass, and I can't wait to stare at the art in the following books of the Lands of RuneQuest series.
Wrapping up
This book is a must for any RuneQuest GM, both in terms of content and presentation. Even if you are a veteran fan of Glorantha and own a previous gazetteer of Dragon Pass, this book in the Lands of RuneQuest series has something you need anyway, be it the gorgeously detailed maps, the numerous stats of typical denizens, or just the wonderful art depicting the landscape and inhabitants. Since Dragon Pass is the setting for many RQ scenarios and campaigns, it is indispensable tool for creating further adventures for your players, particularly if they are fond of exploring the land or traveling away from their homeland in some quest.
Chaosium has managed to create an attractive product by making it more than just a gazetteer with a map. It is unavoidable that some of its content overlaps with other existing books, particularly the Homelands section from the rulebook that this supplement greatly expands. I also wonder how the upcoming Sartar Homeland book will avoid repeating some of the information presented here. Still, the doubt remains whether the space the extra content occupies would have been better used to provide more interesting details in all locations, such as local NPCs, myths, and adventure seeds. Would you have preferred longer and juicier descriptions instead of all the stats, character generation, and art? If you ask me, I would have liked to have it all. :-)
The best:
- Loaded with useful content for running campaigns: history, climate, places, typical denizens...
- Lots of awesome, immersive art throughout the book.
- The level of detail and clarity of the foldable map.
- The descriptions of the «people everyone knows» of each kingdom in Dragon Pass.
- Info on the temples in every town and their size, where you can replenish your Rune points.
- The monsters and great spirits.
The worst:
- I wish the printed map would have been larger, without the margins.
- The map should have rough coordinates on the margins to make finding locations easier.
- The descriptions could have been beefier: Some are rather bland and do not include the mythical local history. Also, Tarsh and the Grazelands should have more VIPs described.
Wow! I need this book badly! It looks like a book for dreaming rather than reading.
ResponderEliminarOssi is a great name for the duck of the illistration, Ossi the avenger of iconoclasts
It's great for dreaming up adventures while you read! :-)
EliminarA mi me ha encantado el libro.
ResponderEliminarY como aficionado a Rune Quest Glorantha, me parece un imprescindible en la colección
Totalmente. Si vas a jugar una campaña en el Paso del Dragón o quieres hacerte una buena idea de cómo es el universo de juego, viene genial.
Eliminar